SFF Cover Art Love: Some Favourites—& Reflections On Why They “Work” For Me

Those featured included the first, US mass market cover for A Game Of Thrones, by artist Stephen Youll. As I posted at the time, “…the whole look of it [the jacket] just reached out to me and said: “Buy me, I’m your kind of story!” And it really was!”

I also mentioned the Mel Odom cover for Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana and the wonderful Kinuko Craft jacket for Juliet Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing.

Others I’d throw into the “favourites” mix include the Donato cover for Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, a UK mass market cover for Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword, and the jacket art for James Norcliffe’s The Assassin Of Gleam.

But then I got to thinking about why they’re favourites: what causes each of these jacket renderings to “speak” to me in a way that then draws me in to reading the book?

I believe all are powerful in their diverse ways and an important aspect of their power is that all have a strong central figure but with a sense of a larger world—whether it’s the physical landscape of winter in A Game Of Thrones, the towers/soldiers of Tigana, or the tree roots and flame in the circle surrounding the central figures of woman and demon in The Blue Sword. In that sense, all three jackets evoke a sense of both the characters and the world, and the big-in-scope stories.

I think, as well, that juxtaposition is an important element in many of them: the flame of Kvothe’s hair against the darker background which is both trees (living/animate) and stone (inanimate) for The Name Of The Wind; the juxtaposition of Hari and the demon rider in The Blue Sword; and the black rider (yay, Jon Snow!), horse and crow (moving) against the (still) white-grey background of the A Game Of Thrones jacket.

Subtler details also have a powerful influence, like the woman (Dianora) being ‘face forward’ in the Tiganacover and directly set against the side-profile warriors, while their ‘horizontality contrasts with the ‘verticality’ of the background towers—and the scene’s sense of movement comes from the scarlet banner.

Despite it’s strong sense of darkness, there’s movement in The Assasin Of Gleamcover, too: in the edges of the cloak and the sense of the rider coming straight toward you.

The contrasts of character & world, together with the juxtapositions, work together to make the images compelling. But the other element they share is a sense of mystery, sparking the desire to know more: I want to know who the riders are, on the A Game Of Thrones and The Assasin Of Gleam covers: where they’re going and on what business?

Similarly, the whole of Kvothe’s appearance—the hair, the torn shirt, the book in one hand and the musical instrument in the other—all provoke a “Who is he? What’s going on?” response. Similarly, the juxtaposition of Hari (The Blue Sword) Dianora (Tigana), and Jena (Wildwood Dancing)—all full face against their respective backgrounds—draw you in through the desire to resolve the elements in the respective covers, which convey a rich sense of “story” to be encountered and explored.

The other element that is present in all the covers is a feeling of ‘movement’, which I mentioned above. Interestingly, many of the same elements are also present in the cover of Among Others (recently read and reported on here.) The jacket has the foreground figure of the young girl dancing (movement) against a mysterious ‘dreaming spires’ background, while the circle of stars about the girl adds to both the sense of movement and mystery… Perhaps not surprisingly , it ‘drew’ me to the book.

So there you have it, a few more favourite covers and some of the reasons they may “work” for me as a reader.

"THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world."--Robin Hobb

Thornspell

Jacket art by Antonio Javier Caparo

Thornspell is my first novel and is published by Knopf (Random House Children's Books, USA). It won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2009 for Best Novel: Young Adult and was a Storylines Childrens' Literature Trust Notable Book 2009.